obituary

Patrick Jones is dead. You might recall Patrick Jones as the troubled youth standing at the main intersection here in town asking people, back during Desert Storm, to Honk For Peace, High Beams for Cease Fire. And you might recall Patrick Jones as balding and weight-gaining over the last 12+ years, sitting most Fridays and Saturdays some Tuesdays and Wednesdays at the main intersection of town protesting the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Patrick Jones was born just over the state line. His family moved here when he was five years old. Family…it was just him and his mother. His father was killed in last days of the Vietnam War. With great bitterness and irony Patrick Jones called that war the Vietnam Conflict. It was the source of his bad grades, that attitude, and he never graduated high school. Like Mr. Bojangles before him he drank a bit. The pension from his father’s military death kept him from working too terribly hard. He washed dishes at the Bitterwood, bartended there too, did some temp staffing in his younger more energetic days, returned bottles and cans. He felt hard done by President Clinton when Clinton threw those bombs to what-at-the-time seemed like a ploy to get the Houses off his back for Monica Lewinsky. Turned out that was fuel for the bombs that flew out of Boston, Newark and Washington DC on September 11th 2001. When George W. Bush sent American servicemen to war, Patrick Jones went back to the main intersection here in town, hand-painted signs in tow, and day after day he held them up for all see: US OUT OF THE MIDDLE EAST, SUPPORT THE TROOPS? PLEASE TELL ME HOW, Honk 4 Peace, High Beams 4 Cease Fire. Most residents found it bothersome and ineffectual, but it was an important voice in our small community.

Patrick Jones was killed in a single car accident on the old highway late last night. The tire tracks of his F-150 described a steady roll over the double yellow lines, into the oncoming lane, onto the gravel, down into the gulley, up the other side where it slammed into a tree. There was no skid mark. Alcohol was determined to be no factor, at least not at the time of his death, he’d been down for quite some time though. Patrick Jones was preceded in death by his father Corporeal Patrick Jones, and his mother Patrice Jones (nee Patricks). Patrick Jones is dead at age of 45.